The Death of Religion and the Rebirth of Spiritby Joseph Chilton PearcePosted by: DailyOM

In 1975, while working on my third book, Magical Child, a school teacher asked how he was supposed to teach children anything and prepare them to face the hard reality of life when all they wanted to do was play. I was working on the book’s chapter on play and looked for some authority I could quote to defend or justify what so many saw as a waste of time. I knew this teacher’s “hard reality” was a fiction made real by eliminating play. I realized that all I had wanted to do as a child was play or be told stories, and all my own children had wanted was to play or be told stories.

Play is the very reason for life, the reason why nature built such a lifelong compulsion into us to play every chance we get. Play is life
living itself, nature celebrating herself, with no explanation or need for justification. We are born to play. The church comes along with some
annual mea-culpa day of solemnity, sack-cloth and ashes, and we turn
it into a carnival; the night before All Souls' Day becomes the celebration
of Halloween, with its pranks and mischief; Christmas becomes Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and jingle-bells; Easter becomes bunnies and new bonnets.

From the moment of conception, life expands through bonds of belonging, pleasure, and joy. Relating with each other and the earth is play. The more complex the organism, the higher its intelligence and the more complex its play of relationships, with the highest of all being the ever-unfolding expressions of love. Play expresses life’s love of itself, the highest moral imperative.

2004 Reprinted with permission of Joseph Chilton Pearce Inner Traditions Bear and Company